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Qantas now allowing award bookings to be upgraded using Qantas Points

How to upgrade award bookings using Qantas Points

Qantas announced yesterday that you can now request an upgrade using your Qantas Points for Classic Award bookings (i.e. bookings you’ve made with your Qantas points).

This new ability to upgrade Classic Award flights has introduced another layer to the question of ‘how should I redeem my Qantas Points’, and has the potential to extract more points from your hard-earned frequent flyer balance.

Here’s how it works, and stacks up against redeeming for a flight outright.

The difference between paid fare upgrades and Classic Award upgrades

The points cost to upgrade a paid fare varies on the type of fare (i.e. it costs more to upgrade a Discount Economy fare than a full-fare Flexible Economy ticket), which seems reasonable.

As opposed to upgrading a paid ticket using your points (which may be useful, for example, if your employer has paid for an economy ticket and you wish to use your points to upgrade), it’s important to remember that if you’re upgrading an award flight what you are doing is spending more points to upgrade something that you have already spent points to book.

What does it cost to upgrade a flight?

Qantas has published two tables for flight upgrades – domestic and international. These tables have different amounts for the same distance band for some reason, but for upgrading classic award flights they are the same.

The points costs for these tables are below, as well as the original point cost of the the booking you would be upgrading, and the outright cost of a redemption of the class you are upgrading to.

Domestic Fares

As Qantas domestic only has economy and business class, the table is relatively simple (as there is only one type of upgrade available):

Zone

One-way miles

Original Economy Cost

Cost to upgrade to Business

Total Cost of upgraded flight

Cost of outright Business redemption

Difference

1

0-600

8,000

12,000

20,000

16,000

4,000

2

601-1,200

12,000

18,000

30,000

24,000

6,000

3

1,201-2,400

18,000

26,000

44,000

36,000

8,000

4

2,401-3,600

22,500

35,000

57,500

50,000

7,500

As you can see, there’s a hefty premium attached to upgrading your Economy award flights to Business as opposed to redeeming Business class flights to start with.

In fact, given that domestic award flights are upgraded instantly (meaning there has to be business class redemption availability to upgrade), for all but the shortest domestic routes you would be better off paying the 5000 point fee and changing your flight booking to the Business class flight, or cancelling your redemption and rebooking in Business if it is available.

International Fares

Given that Qantas fly more classes on their international routes, the upgrade options between the classes are understandably more complex!

I have separated these into three tables for simplicity, again to show the upgrade costs vs outright redemptions. It appears that you can’t use this upgrade process to upgrade from a Business booking to First, so I’ve not put a table in for that.

Economy to Premium Economy

Zone

One-way miles

Original Economy Cost

Cost to upgrade to Premium Economy

Total Cost of upgraded flight

Cost of outright Premium Economy redemption

Difference

1

0-600

8,000

8,000

16,000

12,000

4,000

2

601-1,200

12,000

12,000

24,000

18,000

6,000

3

1,201-2,400

18,000

18,000

36,000

27,000

9,000

4

2,401-3,600

22,500

26,000

48,500

37,000

11,500

5

3,601-4,800

28,000

38,000

66,000

45,000

21,000

6

4,801-5,800

35,000

48,000

83,000

54,000

29,000

7

5,801-7,000

40,000

56,000

96,000

63,000

33,000

8

7,001-8,400

45,000

70,000

115,000

72,000

43,000

9

8,401-9,600

55,000

80,000

135,000

84,000

51,000

10

9,601-15,000

60,000

90,000

150,000

96,000

54,000

Economy to Business

Zone

One-way miles

Original Economy Cost

Cost to upgrade to Business

Total Cost of upgraded flight

Cost of outright Business redemption

Difference

1

0-600

8,000

12,000

20,000

16,000

4,000

2

601-1,200

12,000

18,000

30,000

24,000

6,000

3

1,201-2,400

18,000

26,000

44,000

36,000

8,000

4

2,401-3,600

22,500

35,000

57,500

50,000

7,500

5

3,601-4,800

28,000

54,000

82,000

60,000

22,000

6

4,801-5,800

35,000

64,000

99,000

72,000

27,000

7

5,801-7,000

40,000

80,000

120,000

84,000

36,000

8

7,001-8,400

45,000

100,000

145,000

96,000

49,000

9

8,401-9,600

55,000

110,000

165,000

112,000

53,000

10

9,601-15,000

60,000

124,000

184,000

128,000

56,000

Premium Economy to Business

Zone

One-way miles

Original Premium Economy Cost

Cost to upgrade to Business

Total Cost of upgraded flight

Cost of outright Business redemption

Difference

1

0-600

8,000

12,000

20,000

16,000

4,000

2

601-1,200

12,000

18,000

30,000

24,000

6,000

3

1,201-2,400

18,000

26,000

44,000

36,000

8,000

4

2401-3,600

22,500

35,000

57,500

50,000

7,500

5

3,601-4,800

28,000

54,000

82,000

60,000

22,000

6

4,801-5,800

35,000

64,000

99,000

72,000

27,000

7

5,801-7,000

40,000

80,000

120,000

84,000

36,000

8

7,001-8,400

45,000

100,000

145,000

96,000

49,000

9

8,401-9,600

55,000

110,000

165,000

112,000

53,000

10

9,601-15,000

60,000

124,000

184,000

128,000

56,000

Again, there is a steep premium attached to booking a lower class award booking and then upgrading rather than just booking the higher class outright.

In addition, on an international flight, any upgrade request will go through the wait list system, so if there is redemption availability for Premium Economy or Business on the flight you are booked on, you are much better off paying the 5000 point fee to change your flight and selecting the higher cabin, than using this upgrade system. Not only do you save the points, but travelling in a higher class cabin is guaranteed.

Summing up – Qantas Classic Award Upgrades

While Qantas have launched this with much fanfare, in reality the points premium to use this upgrade process mean that in almost every case where there is redemption availability in the higher class, you should pay the change fee to change your booking to that class rather than the upgrade process.

The sole exception to this is a single-sector booking on the shortest routes, where using the upgrade process will cost you 1000 points less.

The time this may be worthwhile is if you are booked in Economy (or Premium Economy) on a specific flight and you have no flexibility on alternatives; and there is no availability in higher classes on that flight; you could try your luck to request an upgrade and hope that the waiting list system is in your favour.

Whether or not you want to spend the inflated points cost for the upgrade request over a guaranteed booking is up to you – but if you do this, check back regularly to see if a redemption spot has opened up, and do a flight change instead if it has!

Qantas now allowing award bookings to be upgraded using Qantas Points was last modified: November 13th, 2018 by Jason Belcher

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Who wrote this
guide?

Jason is based in Perth and travels predominantly for leisure. He has a keen interest in personal finance as well as frequent flyer points, and regularly seeks out the best options for optimising spending and points to be able to travel in style.

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Comments

A strange thing seems to have happened on the Qantas website following these changes.

If you are only a bronze QFF member, you can no longer see any J availability on any international route on QF in 2017. Availability for J award flights literally disappeared over night following this announcement. Only partner airline award space is visible.

Is this some unannounced policy change to significantly limit bronze member award availability and increase availability for elite tier point upgrades? Elites did previously have a “little” more availability but never this much of a difference.

I have been closely monitoring the BNE/SYD/MEL-SIN routes and US-BNE/SYD/MEL routes both before and after these changes, due to wanting to book a OW J award fare for my honeymoon next year. I was checking basically once a day.

I have been a higher QFF tier in the past but I no longer travel for work and as such have been moved down to bronze. I also have enough QFF points for 2 business OW awards.

Prior to the announcement there was quite a lot of availability on these routes for Jan and Feb 2017. However, after this announcement they all disappeared literally overnight. I then started checking other routes and behold, no QF availability for any international sector in business. When you search using a bronze account you only see the odd business seat but these are on CX and QR. Using a Gold account, you see ‘normal’ amount of QF award seating which is basically half the month available.

Hey Alexander, You’re right. It looks like all paid fares on Domestic can be upgraded, but the cheapest of the cheap (so probably classed as sale fares) International ones can’t.

As far as the extra , that’s the standard change fee (in points, not dollars) to change or cancel a Qantas redemption booking. In nearly every case if there is a redemption seat available in the class you want to upgrade to, you would be better off changing (or cancelling and rebooking) your flight and paying the 5000 point fee, than using this upgrade system because the difference will be more than 5000 points.

Damn I was kind of excited to use this but it looks like everything is gonna cost more points to upgrade from economy.

We still can’t upgrade from a sale fare that’s what I would love to utilise.

Also what did you mean pay the extra 5k to change your flight. I get it would he more advantageous but after you’ve paid the difference does that mean you now pay the rest of the business fare for example with cash?